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Ask HN: Developers who switched from native development to Flutter, how is it?

33 points by busymom0 ↗ HN
I have been developing apps for iOS and Android for about a decade (I am the developer of Hacker News client app HACK for iOS and Android). I originally started with Objective C and Java and then switched to Swift and Kotlin.

I am looking into trying out Flutter for the second time, so am curious how others who made the switch like it?

Also, has Flutter improved their web development? Last time I tried it, it was all a canvas which was drawing all elements instead of HTML elements. This seemed pretty bad for accessibility and SEO. Is that still the case?

How's accessibility for the iOS and Android apps built in Flutter?

22 comments

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ilrwbwrkhv
It works for simple custom apps.
anonygler
So it’s like react native, but less portable to your web stack?
willmorrison
Flutter can target the web too: https://flutter.dev/multi-platform/web
ponyous
Yeah but it's still less portable. As in libraries that you write for mobile (RN) can be used on web.
shadowfu
"libraries that you write for mobile"

If you're writing java/kotlin, yes. If you're writing UI libraries, its portable.

shadowfu
I've used flutter for several years. Years before that I wrote in Dart for web and native work. I've loved flutters ability to reach multiple platforms with the same codebase and still look great. My small-ish team has been responsible for several clients across multiple platforms and using flutter is letting us focus more on what we want to build, not where.

Not my writing; https://stadia.dev/blog/how-flutter-helped-us-make-stadia-co...

Bias disclosure: I worked on the original dartc compiler, am a sr. Googler, and have given talks about flutter. These are my opinions and I'm a happy evangelist for the framework.

shadowfu
Web: you have html and canvas kit rendering. It's fast and can auto select which renderer to use - or you can force it.
ratio11
I'd be interested in hearing the experiences of people who switched from React Native to Flutter, or vice versa. Especially those who needed web support.
lawgimenez
Hey man I just been using Hack for iOS lately. Please don’t update to Flutter. I’m an iOS dev too and the performance is just not that good.
busymom0
Oh yea, I won't be switching HACK to Flutter. Mostly looking into it for newer apps I build.
shyrka
> Hey man I just been using Hack for iOS lately. Please don’t update to Flutter. I’m an iOS dev too and the performance is just not that good.

What's HACK? I'm starting my journey into mobile dev and not come across this.

mattmanser
It's the HN mobile app the op made, re-read the top of the discussion to see.
rochak
I have no idea about Flutter but just wanna thank you for creating such an incredible app. I use it everyday.
txt-me
We use Flutter in our apps. We work in b2c messaging and I would say that the performance claims are quite exaggerated.

From the pluses: we cover all the 5 platforms(https://txt.me/download) with a single developer(he's very good though). From the minuses: on some platforms we are lacking some features, like proper webview in desktop and action buttons in the push notificatons.

busymom0
Why do you say “performance claims are quite exaggerated”? Is that because the app is laggy or something?
NonNefarious
I considered it for the five minutes it took to find out that everyone would have to learn Dart.
shadowfu
Learning Dart is a ~1 week amount of time.
wruza
Yeah, that’s why companies usually demand 3-5 weeks of programming language experience when hiring.
ratg13
Took me about a week to learn.

I am not a software developer by trade, but am now happily building apps whenever I get an idea.

NonNefarious
I'm not saying it's hard to learn. But we have teams in three countries who have more than enough work to do already. When they have to support what my team is building, they don't have the luxury of taking a week to learn a new language. I can't really sell that plan to our CTO, adding the inconvenience of a niche language to a project's other significant risks.

We program in C++, with a sprinkling of Python or whatever else is needed to keep stuff building. I wrote an iOS application for us in Swift, but I'm the only one there who knows it.

mapmap
I’ve found that background support, particularly with Bluetooth, is lacking.
umangsh
Flutter worked really well for Famnom (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32204944). Write once - run anywhere, solid documentation, rich plugins and libraries (for e.g state management through https://bloclibrary.dev/), and an expanding developer community are great.

However, there are observable performance gaps with native. For e.g. scroll performance and dropdown fields can sometimes feel abrupt.